New $10 YouTube Music Service to Launch Next Week, Replacing Google Play Music

Google is launching YouTube Music next week, shortly followed by YouTube Premium – a revamped version of its ad-free YouTube Red subscription service with a renewed focus on original programming. Announced on Wednesday in a blog post, the shake-up in services represents a splitting of the original YouTube Red subscription model, which gave users both ad-free music streaming and access to original video content for $10 a month.

The new YouTube Music-only service will also cost $10 a month and replaces Google Play Music – existing subscribers will be migrated automatically (that includes non-paying users who have purchased music via Google Play or used the service to upload tracks and playlists). The rebranded service includes personalized playlists, intelligent search, support for background playback and music downloads for offline listening.

The streaming service will also remove ads from music videos, but not the rest of YouTube. An ad-supported version of YouTube Music will be available for free. As part of the launch, Google is promising a "reimagined" mobile app and desktop player that's "designed for music".

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else - all simply organized and personalized. For the first time, all the ways music moves you can be found in one place.

YouTube Premium, meanwhile, will cost $12 a month, and includes all the benefits of YouTube Music plus access to original shows as well as ad-free viewing for all of YouTube. The extra $2 over the original YouTube Red subscription will pave the way for more YouTube Originals from around the globe, featuring comedies, dramas, reality series, and action adventure shows from the U.K., Germany, France, Mexico, and more. Existing YouTube Red members will continue to pay the current price for YouTube Premium, however.

YouTube Music and launches on Tuesday, May 22 in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea, rolling out to more countries in the following weeks. They will include Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

YouTube Premium will roll out "soon" in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea, later followed by Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

For those asking, I am on a Google Play Music Family Plan just did a chat with Google Play Music support. According to them, nothing changes for current subs. You will pay the same amount and still get Red (soon to be Premium), and also access to YouTube Music. I have seen others on Reddit report the same results from support chat. So it seems at least for now we are grandfathered in.

Going to concerts and buying songs/album only when I really like them.

ugh I wish they would give me the choice of a cheaper tier that just allowed background play and removed ads :-/ I'd gladly pay $5 a month for that

The free tier from Spotify is great, I'd like it on Apple music as well. And I'd probably pay the 5$ fee they charge for students if I could. I don't feel like spending $10 each and every month since I can listen a lot of stuff for free with a little bit of ads every now and then

Google is such a confusing company. It kinda reminds me of Microsoft back in the day. For instance at work today we were talking about Google Search. I recently started in a new position and haven't really looked closely at what we're using for our search engine stuff because in my last position I managed a customized WP search for our network of sites. In the meeting they said that Google is shutting down the Google Search Appliance, which a lot of sites in our organization use, and we're switching to to Google Custom Search. I bring up the site that I had just logged into the other day for the search engine for the sites I just took over, and asked what this is. It was Google Search Console, and somebody there told me that's actually something else entirely. So now I need to figure out what in the world we have and if it's going away because Google never emailed me about this. I actually didn't even have access to it from our resource account as it was tied to the previous, two times removed, web admin's personal Google account so I had to wrestle that back under our control by putting some code on our site to prove to Google that I have control of it. I hate every time I have to interact with their crap. Anyone try using Google Analytics? Talk about user-hostile design. Holy crap!

I wonder how long Apple will keep supporting the iTunes Match service that is also included with Apple Music? I believe Amazon has recently dumped their music upload cloud storage offering. It's probably not cheap to run, and licensing fees are paid for matching user uploads with already stored tracks.

The difference with iTunes Match is that Apple just checks out music already on their servers (at least 80% of the time).

Google Play and Amazon has to host everyone's music. So there could be 1 million mp3s of "Louie Louie" on their servers, with Apple, just one.

I still think Eddy Cue and his band of morons will think of a way to kill it.

Oh, and hey YouTube, how about a $5 tier for ad free and make me watch ads on your premium content, because I don't care about your premium content!
I don't go to YouTube to see Logan Paul jumping on a trampoline and pay $12 a month.

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